Is there a “right” way to give our gifts to the world? In the years when I was guiding wilderness rites of passage programs, we encouraged participants to identify the gift they would bring more fully into the world. People often got stuck on this concept. They thought a “gift” meant something specific, like perfect pitch or training as an EMT. But the “gift” is fundamentally who we are, and it is this sensibility, this passion, this whole-bodied approach to life that we need to cultivate to help us get through hard times and give to others, both human and non-human. Here’s an example.

A tale from 12th-century France tells of a man who, as a youth, worked as a tumbler and acrobat at village fairs. When he got older, he joined a monastery. However, he always felt inferior to the other monks. He couldn’t pray and sing hymns, because he didn’t know how read. One day, alone in the chapel, he stood before the statue of the Virgin Mary and offered her the only gift he was capable of: he did his acrobatics for her. He was much older now and had lost his former limberness, but he put his whole heart into it. One of the other monks spied him and brought the abbot to witness the scene. But as they watched, they saw the man fall into a faint from all his exertion, Then the Virgin Mary stepped down from her pedestal and wiped his face.

This story reminds us of how we make RadJoy gifts to hurt places. When we make our acts of beauty, we don’t do it for posterity, but because we wish to acknowledge our love for the place. Shortly after Radical Joy for Hard Times was founded and we were looking for a symbol or image to express our conviction that radical joy can be found and created in many ways, we used a photograph of a woman doing a cartwheel in a clearcut forest. Some people, including the writer Derrick Jensen, were upset by this image. They thought it insensitive, disrespectful: How could anyone act foolish and playful in the face of such depredation?

But the image, and the action, were meant to communicate: I am dedicated to bringing my offering to this wounded place in as life-affirming and creative a way as possible. Sometimes, along with my sorrow, I bring outrageous, bold gifts of play, levity, and full-bodied charity. Any gift we make for the Earth or offer to others is a beautiful gift.